Put 1T butter and a drained can of minced or chopped clams into a small sauce pan, season with salt and cayenne. Chop a cup or large handful of spinach. Add to sauce pan. Add 6 T of spaghetti sauce and 2T of pesto sauce. Let simmer on low while cooking up 1.5 servings of spaghetti noodles. Drain and put into sauce, stir. Cover on lowest heat to keep warm. Sear 3 or 4 sea scallops in butter, drizzled with lemon, seasoned with salt and cayenne. Cut into half, plate pasta with spinach and claim sauce, place scallops on top. Serve.

Chicken and Avocado on Rice. (by far the easiest)

Buy chicken strips cut for stir-fry. Dice up. Season to taste. Fry up. While frying, put 2 packets of Uncle Ben’s Basmati Rice in microwave and cook per instructions. Half and dice up one avocado. Put rice into 2 – 4 bowls. Season rice to taste. I use Cayenne. Divide fried chicken over the rice. Top with diced avocado. Serve. (I tend to make larger portions because avocado needs to be eaten quickly and I cook for myself. If you have a family, making this as four servings with a salad and a second veggie side would make for a more balanced meal.)

Sausage and Cabbage in Ro-Tel. ( someone gave me this one)

Melt a stick of butter in a pan. Saute a shredded small cabbage and diced onion for 5 minutes. Cut up sausage or kielbasa. Add kielbasa and a can of Ro-Tel. Cover and simmer for 20 – 25 minutes.

Beef and Spinach with Ravioli Soup.

1 lb meat, (I’m using beef). Fry up with some onion. Add half pot of water. Bullion or broth. Season to taste. Bring to boil. While this is going on, chop up several cups of spinach. Have a package of whatever flavor of stuffed Ravioli or Tortellini trips your trigger. Add the pasta. Cook until done. Add spinach. Simmer until spinach is wilted and serve. I’ve made this with Kale as well and chicken and ground turkey and ground chicken. The only way I hated was with the ground chicken. I just think I hate ground chicken.

I have this super simple dish I make sometimes. It always tastes great but it takes a long time to make.

I start with a few cups of water and set it to boil with a bullion cube in it. Any type, sometimes chicken, sometimes beef, sometimes veggie.

Once the lentils are nearly done I add rice and whatever seasoning trips my trigger at that moment in time.

You have to watch to check the water, add more as needed. I’ve found it always takes more than the amount of lentils and rice recommend. I’m not sure why.

Now I just as water as needed until both the rice and lentils are soft.

I’ve never had it turn out bad.

That being said, I’ve had trouble using some of the so-called instant rice. Regular instant rice cooks up fine. But there is an ‘instant’ boil in bag Jasmine rice that doesn’t seem to work. I, of course, cut the bag and pour it in. The problem is that the box says this ‘instant’ jasmine rice cooks up in 8 to 10 minutes. This is not true. I’ve never had it cook in under about half an hour. Even when cooking it on its own according to the cooking instructions on the box. If you want to use Jasmine rice, it will turn out better if you just buy a normal bag of the stuff and cook it per those instructions.

I generally do not like Fazoli’s. But I was tired and in a lot of pain so, when Jeff went through the drive through, I decided to get the Classic Caesar salad. It said it had chicken on it. I get home. No chicken. I look it up online. The description is as follows:

There is no chicken on it. I called and complained. They are supposed to be sending me a coupon. I hope it is a free meal. Or a free salad. Since I don’t like any of their sauces or their pizza.

Almost an hour later, my roommate comes over with his meal. He ate the bread sticks and pizza ‘side’ first and waited a bit for the rest. He asked me to pick the chicken off his pasta sampler. He has problems with chicken. You know, like some people have digestive issues with pork. So he doesn’t eat chicken.

The chicken, only on the top, was chopped up pieces and the correct portion size for a salad. Gee, I think we found the chicken. Only it had sauce touching the bottom half of all the pieces. And we know how I feel about their sauces. Not to mention, my salad, that was a total rip off without the chicken, was already gone.

You wake up and feel exhausted. You feel as if you are just getting off work, not just getting up to a new day. When you get to work, you realize that you are actually in a bad mood that is a holdover from the day before. As the morning progresses, you realize that your bad mood is progressing from bad to foul.

This was my morning. I can’t say I dreamt about work.

I actually had a dream about jumping through hoops to get a volunteer job at a library. One that would put me in place for when a paid opening came along. I had to make nice with and get a bunch of criminals to approve of me. This seemed odd. Italy kept coming up as well. When I finally woke up, I had been in a card game that I had never played before called Around the World. Certain cards represented certain countries. Whoever had the highest cards for the countries and got the highest score for the hand won the hand. I had a cheat sheet since I never played before. Italy was represented by a lot of the club cards. I was on the third country, which I can’t remember now, and the symbols on the cheat sheet were three pillars. One pillar had a flame over it, one had half a flame, and the other had no flame. I had no idea what that meant and which cards could be connected to pillars. What was going on? Was the library run by the Mafia?

At that point I just got up. I didn’t want to dream that dream anymore. But I felt exhausted. I was so tired last night that I fell asleep shortly after 9:30. Then I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night. I was up from about 1 – 2 am. After that, I slept for about 4 hours and 20 minutes more. I guess that means I was about 10 minutes shy of 8 hours. Or does it not count since I was up for an hour in the middle?

Half way to work, I realized I forgot to take my blood pressure medication. So it didn’t help when I realized I was in a really bad mood. That always raises the old blood pressure. Having a few non-work related conversations w/ coworkers has helped a bit.

Reading news media is not helping.

How about the South Carolina governor who decided rape victims and battered wives were a distraction from real issues and who denied funding for things that would help them? And this official is a woman. A woman who thinks rape and domestic violence are not important issues.

This reminds me of the women who fought hard AGAINST allowing women the right to vote. It catapults her into the ranks of women who believe in holding other women back, women who believe that a woman’s place is in the home, not working, and unable to have their own bank accounts or get loans without written permission from their husbands.
I’m shocked she ran for office and she claims her focus is on jobs. Oh, I guess she is in office to support a male agenda and to yank women back to their status from the 1940’s. She will help create jobs by keeping women in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, whether they want to be or not.

Am I being too harsh? I don’t think so.

There was another political article I wanted to rant and rave about, but now I can’t find it and my mind is drawing a blank.

It’s been one of those days. I know a storm is predicted, I wonder if we will get it sooner than predicted. My head is killing me and two Excedrin didn’t put a dent in it. If anything, it is getting worse. On one hand, I really want this break in the hideous heat. On the other hand, I could live without the headache. The heat was so bad that I skipped all 4th of July events this year.

I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the heat and from what I’ve been reading in my research, this may be the way weather is going to be. People have been talking about finding ways to slow down or reverse global warming since the 70’s. Governments have been trying to come to agreements and failing. Businesses have been fighting it tooth and nail because they don’t want the cost of having to install new systems. I’ve been saying for years that I believe we are nearing the point of no return. Now the scientists are starting to say that we are approaching the point of no return.

I can’t fall asleep if it is over 72 degrees. But I think the real problem for me is humidity and the heat index. I didn’t have this problem back home, in the Northwest, where we didn’t have AC. But even 90 degree weather didn’t feel that bad without humidity. I never even heard of a heat index until I moved to the Midwest.

Also from the news, if a person has to have a friend get her a disposable phone, get her parents involved, and hire 3 different law firms in order to get started on divorce proceedings, there has to have been something really really wrong in the marriage. And since most actors and actresses do joint custody when they split (or so seems to me), it seems significant that she was putting everything in place in secret and going after sole custody.

Normally I don’t really care about these people. They are just people who happen to have a way overpaid job. Too many of them develop an attitude of entitlement. I like the down to earth ones who don’t seem to let fame get in the way of their personal and family life, like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell for example, and seem to retain that ‘real person’ quality that so many other actors and stars loose.

Maybe it’s because I just don’t care for Tom Cruise, maybe it’s because there seem to have been (viewing from the outside) manipulation and control issues in the marriage, but I can’t help but wonder just what was going on with them that caused Katie Holms to be so secretive and go to such lengths to get herself out of that marriage as quickly as possible once she broke the news to Tom.

Okay, I’ll be honest, it is actually an overwhelming curiosity of which I am somewhat ashamed. While I’m at it, I’ll take a moment to ask SOMEONE out there to tell Britney Spears that blue eye shadow went out with the 80’s and we really don’t want it to make a come back.

How did I end up in entertainment news on my lunch break? Speaking of lunch, it was catered today because one woman was on her 40th year here and anther on her 20th year here. They had really good catering picks for a change, at least one of them. I got food poisoning at the other about 6 or 7 years ago. Either way, good one or bad one, I still say that if your plastic fork snaps in half when you try to pick up a bite-sized piece of chicken then it was a bit overcooked.

Well, this has been a rather meandering post, going from one thing to another as it pops up. I’ll call it good for now. Lunch is almost over.

I really was not in the mood to make dinner last night and almost stopped at the Vietnamese Asian Cafe and ordered Spring Rolls to go. But I went home and forced myself to make something I already had. It didn’t really take that long. But I was in no mood and neglected to take photos. The above is a slice of my lunch today. The cheese started to cool on the long walk back from the microwave. So it isn’t the lovely pie I pulled out of the oven. But it still looks nice enough.

Cut up bacon to one inch pieces, (kitchen shears work great)
Mince onion, mince garlic, dice chicken.
Start cooking bacon pieces,
Put a layer of butter on your crust, spread minced garlic over it, put a sprinkling of your cheese down.
Remember to stir bacon between the above steps, now drain part of the grease and add onion.
Add a layer of spinach or mixed greens, (used 50/50 spinach/spring mix), sprinkling of cheese.
Add chicken, cook until bacon and chicken are all done, spread around top, sprinkle the last of the cheese.
Top with a Pizza Grinder or seasoning or cayenne or leave alone. Whatever makes you happy.

Put in preheated oven, 425 degrees, cook 8 – 12 minutes.

I liked it but the crust isn’t anything special. I think I like straight spinach better. I have friends who love arugala on pizza. I also do a variation of this where I use a large tortilla wrap for crust. I think it is better. It cooks in about 3 – 5 minutes at 400 Degrees and makes a lovely crispy thin crust. It also has way less calories.

There are all these ways to cook with less oil to make things healthier. But I’ve discovered a secret. And I will share it with you.

If you want to properly sauté up onions and garlic, and get the onions close to caramelizing without them starting to char up, you really need to use more oil and not less. For a veggie that is very strong and bitter, it amazes me that it has enough sugar in it to caramelize when cooking. I’ve found that I like mine best if I stop just as it is hitting that stage.

SO . . . I started by mincing up three slices of onion and adding a heaping spoon of minced garlic from the jar. I dumped it into the heating oil and sprinkled with cayenne. Yes, I use a lot of cayenne. I love it. Like I may have mentioned before, it has a lovely sweet mild flavor with heat that comes through otherwise mildly flavored dishes. And it adds a lovely heat to strongly flavored dishes without altering the flavor.

The smell of onions and garlic sautéing in olive oil is one of my favorite smells. Unfortunately, migraines screw with your sense of smell. Not for everyone, but definitely for me. You probably don’t really want to know that it smelled like cat piss to me. I was very unhappy about that.

While I kept an eye on the minced herbs (because, really, an onion is more of a very large herb than a veggie) I diced up a chicken breast. It was a lovely chicken breast. If I had been thinking, I would have taken pictures of my lovely sautéing onions and garlic as well as the chicken breast. I have, in the past, tried using precooked chicken. It ends up tasting rather horrible with a terrible texture. No matter how horrible I feel, if I don’t start from raw chicken breast from the meat counter, it doesn’t turn out right.

Now this is the trick, to not only cook the chicken, but to get it to start to brown up without the onions starting to fry themselves. I stirred often and let it sit for short bursts and for once managed this trick perfectly. At this point, I had used no salt at all. I used a salt-free chicken and poultry seasoning my parents sent me from their last trip to Hawaii. I added several cups of water and two chicken-flavored bullion cubes. And the salt goes through the roof. If I had been thinking, I would have picked up low sodium chicken broth.

I opened a package of rice noodles. It was in 3 ‘sheets’ for lack of a better description. I took out two and put the last back in the bag for another time. Gripping a sheet firmly in each hand, I twist it in the middle to break it in half, slowly and carefully, so not to send bits of rice noodle in every direction. I have tried cutting it with kitchen sheers but that just made a huge mess. I stirred the noodles in, covered it, and let it cook until the noodles were done.

By this point, it lost it’s distressingly unpleasant aroma. It smelled quite good. It tasted even better. I could have had two bowls of leftovers. But I decided to have a second bowl instead. I would have taken a picture of it today but it just doesn’t look as pretty in a Ziploc bowl as it does in a proper bowl at home. So no pretty pictures for you. I really have to do better to remember the camera when I cook up delicious things.

I had a reasonable breakfast and lunch and make 2 servings of almonds last the entire work day as snacks. Then I went home and made dinner.

And killed my diet. I normally get to meals out of some couscous and chicken. But it was so delicious that a short while after I ate my dinner, I went and got the half I set aside for todays lunch and ate it too.

So much for portion control yesterday. Today, the only day I didn’t drive, was also the only day I didn’t have anything for lunch. I ordered cheesy garlic bread delivered. Now I really want to sleep.